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Less Than Half of U.S Chemical Depots Have Begun Destroying Stocks, GAO Says
Only four of the nine U.S. chemical weapons depots have begun destroying their stockpiles as the United States struggles to meet its Chemical Weapons Convention deadline, the Salt Lake Tribune reported today (see GSN, April 7). According to the General Accounting Office, the four sites are: * the closed Johnson Atoll site, which destroyed its entire chemical weapons stockpile (see GSN, Nov. 7, 2003); * the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah, which has destroyed 47 percent of its stockpile (see GSN, March 30); * the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, which has destroyed 8 percent of its stockpile (see GSN, April 6); and * the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, which has destroyed 5 percent of its stockpile (see GSN, April 2). The United States will probably miss the treaty’s extended deadline of December 2012 to destroy its stockpile if technical problems, safety problems, community opposition, mismanagement and other issues are not addressed, the General Accounting Office said (see GSN, Oct. 31, 2003). In total, the United States has eliminated 8,691 tons of the 31,500 total tons of chemical weapons agents stored at the nine sites, according to the office (Dawn House, Salt Lake Tribune, April 8).
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